It was something else entirely.

“Yes. I do need your help,” Akaar said, reaching toward Tuvok. “I twisted my ankle badly during the rescue.”

Tuvok allowed the much larger man to put his arm around his shoulder, and helped him limp over to a recessed alcove amid several crates of relief provisions. Akaar sat down on top of one of them.

“I’ll get one of the doctors,” Tuvok said and turned to leave.

“Tuvok, wait,” Akaar said.

The Vulcan turned back toward his Capellan superior. “Sir?”

Akaar hesitated for a moment, then spoke, his voice low. “I broke the Prime Directive down there, or at least its spirit. Not in a casual way or even an obvious one.” He paused, then continued, his words spilling out as if the confession had to leave his mouth quickly. “The people I rescued were religious believers who abhor high technology. Rather than help themselves, or allow us to help them, they had chosen to commit suicide, and to kill their children, even as Oghen disintegrated around them.”

He paused for another moment then, looking down. Tuvok remained silent.

“I did not carewhat they wanted,” Akaar said. “I wanted to save them. I wanted their people to have a chance to survive and rebuild. I wanted their childrento grow up with an opportunity to make their own decisions about their futures. So, essentially, I abducted them.”

Tuvok nodded. “You made a command decision, Admiral. You did what you felt was right.”

Akaar stared up at him, his eyes haunted, but said nothing.

Tuvok remained still. “Do you have something more to share?” he finally asked.

“There will undoubtedly be repercussions,” Akaar said at length. “What would youhave done?”

Tuvok squatted on his haunches, bringing his eyes to a level just below those of Akaar. “I would have done what I felt was right as well,”Tuvok said. “Regardless of the repercussions.”

Akaar shut his eyes for a moment and let out a long breath, his shoulders deflating. When he opened his eyes again, they sparkled as tears played at the edges of his eyelids.

“I am sorry, my old friend,” Akaar said finally, his deep voice trembling. “I have wasted so much time in anger.”

Tuvok put his hand forward and laid it gently on the Capellan’s shoulder. Though it was a supremely un-Vulcan gesture, it seemed perfectly appropriate at the moment.

“That is why it is sometimes good to abolish emotions,” Tuvok said very quietly. “Anger, and hurt, can be a cancer in one’s heart.”

Despite all his training and suppression of emotion, Tuvok felt regret and sorrow percolating into his own consciousness as well.

And one other emotion…

Hope.

U.S.S. TITAN

Olivia Bolaji looked over at Noah Powell as he watched the viewscreen with her in sickbay. He had come to be with her and her baby—to “keep them both safe,” in his words—while almost everyone else aboard Titanwas preoccupied with the rescue mission over Oghen.

I shouldn’t let him watch this,she thought, wondering if the boy had fibbed about his mother having given him permission to watch the events unfolding on the planet. Still, the ongoing disaster was only indistinctly visible from Titan’s current orbit, hundreds of kilometers above the surface. She made up her mind to deactivate the screen if Noah seemed to be becoming disturbed by anything he was seeing.

Bolaji was grateful to have learned several minutes ago that her husband had emerged from his sole foray down to the planet unscathed. The Ellington,silhouetted on the viewscreen against the raging fires of Oghen, hadn’t been quite so lucky. Now, apparently, Captain Riker was in the midst of rescuing the shuttle’s passengers and crew.

“So why didn’t they save any of the animals?” Noah asked. “On the Vanguard?”

“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “Maybe they did. But I think they were trying to save as many of the sentient beings as possible.”

Noah screwed up his nose in a thoughtful scowl. “Animals aresentient beings, too. They just think differently than we do. Why aren’t theyjust as important?”

From out of the mouth of babes,Bolaji thought, unable for the moment to formulate an answer the young boy could accept.

“I mean, back in the olden days, when Noah built the ark, he took two of each animal, plus all of his family, so they’d have people and animals once the floods were over,” Noah said. “He’s where I got my name from.”

“Really?”

“Well, kind of. Actually, my great-grandfather was named Noah, too, but I think he was named after the guy with the boat.”

Bolaji nodded, and looked over at her own child, who was sleeping in his incubator. “Totyarguil was named after a star.”

“Totyarguil is kind of hard to spell,” Noah said guilelessly. He looked back at the screen. “My mom said that there never was a real Noah, that it’s all just stories. I hope that’s true. I don’t think a god should destroy a world just because he’s angry.”

Bolaji smiled. “Neither do I,” she told Noah. “But there’s more than one way to think about gods, if you believe in such things.”

“I know,” Noah said. “Like the Prophets of Bajor. But I heard they’re just wormhole aliens.” He thought for a moment, then wiggled his finger in the air. “Do you think that wormhole aliens look like worms?”

Suppressing a laugh, Bolaji said, “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve never seen one.”

Noah pointed to the viewscreen. The image had switched, now showing the Ellingtonbeing tractored toward Titan’s main shuttlebay. The blue glow of an atmosphere-retention forcefield covered the bay’s broad opening. “They’re getting them back aboard Titan.Good. Uncle Ranul is on that ship. I was sort of worried about him. He wasn’t even completely better yet from his coma.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Me, too.” Noah continued to watch the screen intently for a few moments, then looked back at Olivia. “So, do you think this thing that’s trying to destroy their planet is theirgod getting mad at them?”

Bolaji wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question either. She’d read some of the preliminary reports; Starfleet characterized the destructive force as an emerging protouniverse, while the local people and even some Neyel called it the Sleeper.

Some of the latter people certainly didconsider it a vengeful god.

She was about to open her mouth to speak when the orange-tinged world on the screen seemed to collapse on itself, molten magma and rocky crust and mantle material jumbling, falling, flying, like a gigantic egg being beaten in some celestial mixing bowl.

She was about to deactivate the viewer for Noah’s sake when the screen flared brightly, then abruptly went dark.

Oghen just died right in front of us.One of the interspatial energy discharges she’d read about, no doubt an enormous one, must have just ripped out the entire planet’s guts. The thought was jarring, incredible, but also undeniable.

Bolaji heard the muted blare of the red alert klaxons and instinctively looked toward her sleeping baby. The tiny infant slept on, blissfully unaware of the sometimes violent universe into which he’d been born.

“Come sit up here with me,” Olivia said to Noah, and scooted over to one side of her chair. The boy clambered up beside her quickly.

Her eyes fixed on Totyarguil, she held Noah tightly to her, saying a silent prayer to all the gods of her people, even though she, herself, had lost faith in all such things years ago.

VANGUARD

Ever since she had first come aboard Vanguard, Deanna Troi hadn’t felt quite right. It was as though the great asteroid’s hollow interior were somehow amplifying the emotional distress of the hundreds of thousands of people who had been hastily brought aboard the ancient Terran space habitat.